


Album

by Sylvalum



Category: Astral Chain (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Photographs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:40:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22159657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylvalum/pseuds/Sylvalum
Summary: “We’ve shared clothes since we were infants,” she says. “I think we can share a camera album too.”
Relationships: Akira Howard & Player Character
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	Album

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this while in school - what can i say, i'm obsessed with astral chain now i guess

”Again, I’m _so_ glad you’re okay, Alex. And all of your equipment survived the fall too, except for your, uh, camera. I hope you don’t have any urgent need to have it back-“

Alex shakes her head, and Hal’s hologram sighs in relief.

“Great, because it’ll take me a while to fix it without deleting your album in the process. You’ll get it back in a few days, though! Promise.” 

* * *

When Alex gets back inside of Hal’s hideout an evening a few days later, after having gone to the Astral Plane and back to rescue some woman who had been abducted by a nasty winged chimera, Akira and Hal are both sitting in a corner together and looking at something. Hal’s drone and Akira, that is. And when Alex steps into the room the drone quickly shoots up and flies off back to his screens, while Akira starts exuding that vibe of ‘I have done nothing wrong that you can prove’.

Alex stops in the doorway and clears her throat very pointedly.

“Hi Alex,” Akira says. He’s holding something in his hands. “You find anything out there?”

“Just a chimera,” Alex says, and walks over to her brother to sit down next to him on the cot. “What are you doing?”

“Uh, what? Nothing.” Akira clears his throat. “Hal was just showing me how some tech worked.”

Alex raises an eyebrow and looks down at Akira’s hands, that he’s using to cover some small device which looks very much like- “Is that my camera?”

“What?” Akira first says, then sighs. “Yeah. I was just looking at your photos. You’ve got pictures of Jin and Alicia, and _dad_ and the cats and I just-“

Alex pats Akira on the back, clumsily but knowing he gets the gesture anyway. She then says, quietly, “You didn’t take any own photos?”

He shakes his head gloomily, then says darkly, “And besides, I left my camera in my locker at HQ. Yoseph has probably confiscated it as evidence by now.”

Their run-in with the Ravens – all clones of Akira – is still vividly fresh and horrifying in Alex’s mind, and no doubt even more so in her twin’s. That anyone would do that to him… and that Yoseph Calvert, their _commander,_ would do that to Akira… If Alex had reason to doubt Jena’s assessment of Yoseph before, then now she’s got no problem picturing the man as some kind of evil mastermind, pulling the strings back in Neuron and the ARI ever since the Ark was first constructed. Maybe he really wanted to do good once, but now all that power has clearly gotten to his head.

And none of that is Akira’s fault.

“Hey Hal,” Alex says, and the drone spins around. “Thanks for fixing our camera.”

“Uh, yeah, no problem,” Hal stutters, and quickly turns back to his screens, while Akira looks at Alex and says,

_“Our_ camera?”

“We’ve shared clothes since we were infants,” Alex says. “I think we can share a camera album too.”

Akira starts to grin, first a little and then widening as Alex smiles back. “Sure. As long as you don’t mind. But I feel like I ought to warn you that I take a lot of pictures of clouds, wall murals and stray animals.”

“Did you see my collection of chimera pictures? I think I’ll live.”


End file.
